Monday, December 10, 2018

Guide to the Best Decentralized Platform for Gaming

I wrote this post about the best crypto for playing games for this project I'm working on called Keysheet: https://www.keysheet.io/guides/best-decentralized-platform-for-gaming/

Gamings one of the biggest consumer use-cases for crypto today, and my goal with the guide was to dig in and see what games are available and most importantly, if they're actually fun.

Cliff Notes:

  1. Ethereum: Best overall, and best for collectibles. While Ethereum has a lot of shortcomings—confirmation times mean you can't game in real-time, signing transactions from each game is unwieldy, transaction fees etc—it has the most actual games on it and the best . The ERC-721 token standard also means that more applications and games are being developed where collectibles can be traded or modified across different games.
  2. EOS: Best for near real-time gaming. EOS doesn't have transaction fees, transactions settle almost instantly, and you can whitelist contract actions which means that you don't have to manually sign repetitive actions in game. Problems with EOS are 1). There aren't many games. The EOS knights has 4000+ DAUs—100x more than any Ethereum game—but other than that it's pretty dead. 2). Lack of a token standard like ERC-721 means that collectibles on EOS aren't really interoperable yet—makes you wonder if using a blockchain is necessary in the first place.
  3. Bitcoin: Best for gambling. Limited scripting language means you don't see real games on Bitcoin like you do on other platforms. But for gambling, Bitcoin still has the most established gambling sites and biggest payouts.

Overall, games on decentralized platforms are really exciting in terms of potential—you can do stuff in them that you simply can't with traditional games. The main issue for now is that most of these games aren't actually fun yet, and people mostly play them in hopes of making money.

Games like Everquest and WoW had thriving secondary markets because the games were actually fun and people got invested in them. Most people play games to have fun, and not to get rare loot that they can sell on eBay. It sounds obvious, but if games are going to drive mainstream adoption for crypto they have to actually be fun to play.

Would love to hear any feedback from you guys, along with any coins you think should be included but weren't—we'll keep this guide up to date over time.

(If you want to learn more about the site and why we're writing these guides, check out this reddit thread.



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